Saturday, January 23, 2010

Saturday Update on Joseph

Joseph will be moving out of ICU today - praise God!

He's eating jello now ... which is tough for him because he doesn't even like jello on a good day. The nurse informed him he has to eat all of it before he gets anything else - so he asked Nikki if she'd eat it for him. She politely declined.

He walked around the nurses station this morning and is now exhausted from the workout.

By last night, Joseph was not confused anymore and starting to remember details about life. Hearing two friends talk about college, he remembered his classes and asked what he will do about college. We told him not to worry about them at this time.

He remembers coming into the hospital. “I was in a room with a lot of people. I heard someone yell, THIS ONE’S A CODE RED! Then I was quickly moved to another room with a lot more people and that’s all I remember.”

Jerry and I had been told on Saturday night that his situation was dire ... but it didn’t really sink in. On Sunday, a nurse again told us how critical a ruptured kidney is and that they thought they were going to lose him a time or two. We then told Nikki how life-threatening his situation had been. Nikki is like me in that she wasn’t ready to share that with everyone yet. We needed to absorb it first. Over the last few days, we’ve talked to more of his doctors/nurses and they all repeat similar words that make us shudder every time. “You had a very sick boy.” “I didn’t know if he would make it.” “He almost bled to death.” “He’s very fortunate to be alive.”

We didn’t think he needed to know about losing a kidney and that he almost died yet. But one of his nurses told him ... I really like the nurse, so I wasn’t totally upset about it, but I would have appreciated if Joe won’t have known quite so soon.

Last night, he said he’s thankful he’s alive, but he’s sad about losing a kidney ... especially from doing a simple backflip (to me a backflip is not simple!) he wishes he could at least blame it on a major tough trick or jump.

Please pray for peace for him as he processes this major life incident.

He told us he created some unintentionally excitement in his room last night ... “I needed to use the bathroom and couldn’t find my call button. I had to go BAD! Looking around for it, I saw that call button (red button on the wall above his bed) I propped myself up on one arm and was able to reach it.”

“Pulling it down, I quickly found out that’s not a normal call button - it's the “OH SH*T” button! Four nurses came running in here in a panic.”

Thankfully his sense of humor is still intact :)

6 comments:

V. Higgins said...

*laughs* Love his re-telling of the panic button, awesome. I'm praying for all of you!

Candy said...

I'm so glad he's on the mend, Janet. God knew what He was doing when he gave us two kidneys. Keeping you in my prayers. I knew by reading between the lines that he was a very critically ill young man. Praise God for his healing.

Anonymous said...

I am so glad to hear he is doing so well. Many people, like me, live very normal on one kidney. My sadness was when we found that my Dad needed one and I could not even attempt to share one of mine, because I only have one. Keep up the progress joey! Love, Brenda

Jeanne Frances Klaver said...

A sense of humor gets us through all kinds of horror—but so does prayers. You are all in mine.

S. Etole said...

it sounds like you have a delightful son ... remember ... one day at a time

katdish said...

So happy to hear he's improving. Our prayers are still with you all. And I totally need an OH SH*T button, because that's my go to phrase when I just have to say something profane.